Everything about Martin Waldseem Ller totally explained
Martin Waldseemüller (Latinized
Martinus Ilacomilus or
Hylacomylus, c.
1470 – c.
1521/
1522) was a
German cartographer. He and
Matthias Ringmann are credited with naming
America.
Life
Waldseemüller was born in
Freiburg im Breisgau (his mother was from
Radolfzell) and studied at the
University of Freiburg.
On
April 25,
1507, working at St. Deodatus (German:
Sankt Diedel) in the
duchy of
Lotharingia (today
Saint-Dié-des-Vosges,
France), he produced a globular world map and a large 12-panel world wall map (
Universalis Cosmographia) bearing the first use of the name "America". The globular and wall maps were accompanied by a book
Cosmographiae Introductio, an introduction to
cosmography. The book includes a translation to Latin of the
Quattuor Americi navigationes (
Four Voyages of Amerigo), which is apparently a letter written by
Amerigo Vespucci, although some historians consider it to have been a forgery written by its supposed recipient in Italy. The
Cosmographiae describes why the name America was used:
ab Americo Inventore ...quasi Americi terram sive Americam (from Amerigo the discoverer ...as if it were the land of Americus, thus America).
In
1513 Waldseemüller appears to have had second thoughts about the name, probably due to contemporary protests about Vespucci’s role in the discovery and naming of America. In his reworking of the
Ptolemy atlas, the continent is labelled simply
Terra Incognita (unknown land). Despite the revision, 1,000 copies of the world maps had since been distributed, and the original suggestion took hold. While
North America was still called
Indies in documents for some time, it was eventually called
America as well.
The wall map was lost for a long time, but a copy was found in a castle at
Wolfegg in southern Germany by
Joseph Fischer in
1901. It is still the only copy known to survive, and it was purchased by the
Library of Congress in
2001. Four copies of the globular map survive in the form of "gores": printed maps that were intended to be cut out and pasted onto a ball. Only one of these lies in
the Americas today, residing at the
James Ford Bell Library,
University of Minnesota.
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